They Say Girls Is the New Sex and the City--But How Alike Are They, Really? A Side-By-Side Comparison

It was pretty much inevitable the second Lena Dunham's four-girls, one-city pitch was sold to HBO: If I had a nickel for every time I've heard Girls compared to Sex and the City, I'd be too rich to relate to its characters. But now that we've seen episode one, how alike are the two shows, really?

That is, besides the obvious differences—age, status, zip code. I'm talking about in terms of throwing down a philosophy for a broad swath of women.

"Then I realized, 'No one had told her about the end of love in Manhattan.'" That's Carrie Bradshaw in one of her first voiceover moments. The girls of Girls, meanwhile, seem relatively optimistic—or at least happily naive—witness Hannah's inability to resist shirtless Brooklyn jerk.

Acknowledged social circle siren: The blondes have it in both groups of friends, but while Samantha is the epitome of power and savvy, Jessa's appeal is aloof and exotic (although I thought someone having never heard of SATC was a bit of a stretch).

The universal ideal man: One of the confessional extras in the SATC pilot tosses out Alec Baldwin as the guy every New York woman is after. Though nobody's named as such in the Girls pilot, I think that between seeing Hannah's chosen man drug and noticing how everyone dresses, it's safe to say Baldwin is out, Gosling is in.

If you can reach back far enough in your memory, you'll recall that the SATC pilot was literally entirely about why women can't find love—complete with tons of confessional-style sound bites. Hannah and co., by comparison, seem concerned with romance, but it's sharing space at the top of their inspiration board with launching careers and nailing down their identities. Some would say that's a classic twenties v. thirties thing, but I disagree: No matter how old or successful you are, these things are on your mind. So I think the Girls priorities are slightly different.

"All my friends get help from their parents." That's Hannah in the first scene of Girls—and it stuck out to me because SATC famously barely acknowledged its foursome's parents over the years (save for Miranda's mother's funeral).